Outdoors: Bears are here, and that's OK

In preparation for their long winter's sleep, our big-bellied bruins are now totally occupied with eating to pack on calories. Their undiscriminating diet has recently included a few local sheep, chickens and a goat. While that human-intended menu created quite a stir, those few losses were small prices to pay for the magnificent inclusion of black bears in our wildlife world.

Bears possess no malevolence. By nature, they're shy — and just want to get fat. Unlike us, they eat without guilt every chance they get. Fat is happiness and survival.

Their timidity is not only a function of their naturally gentle disposition, but also a learned and inherited reaction of human avoidance instilled by centuries of encounters with bear hunters. With regard to public safety, we've all benefited from bear hunting. Where there is no hunting, some wildlife can prove boldly dangerous.

In Colorado, for example, a man was recently attacked by three coyotes in a developed area where they're common and have lost their fear of people. Residents there now quickly want to re-instill coyotes' fear of man. Massachusetts has no such problems with bears.

Black bear season opened Monday and will run through Nov. 23. A few may be harvested in Worcester County. This is a new phenomenon. Bears, once abundant throughout Massachusetts, disappeared almost entirely after Europeans cleared forests for farmland. By the Civil War, bears numbered only about a dozen, all in our remote, not easily farmed western hills.

Due to Massachusetts' poor soils, farm failures and better agricultural opportunities to our west, area farms were abandoned in great numbers, and reforestation began. With new woods, nutritious mast crops and protection, bears increased dramatically.

Before 1970, local bears were afforded no protection. They could be legally shot any time of year without limits. In 1970, they were given game status, with hunting seasons and bag limits.

They now number about 4,000, and they're coming into Worcester County in ever-greater numbers — an eastward expansion that's inevitable and worth looking forward to. It's important the public gets educated to deal with their arrival and continued presence.

With Western Massachusetts reaching maximum carrying capacity, young, pressured males have to leave those crowded territories, entering the closest vacuum. Worcester County is their current safety valve.

Whether their new territory is hospitable or not is largely dependent on our attitudes. Ominously, many urbanites with little wildlife knowledge regard the arrival of bears into their world as a reason to fearfully go into bunkers. Absurdly, kids have been kept in classrooms during recess when a bear was reported in their town.

Hysterical residents have typically demanded the capture and relocation of these bears back into the pressured western territories, which they just vacated. But it doesn't do much good to add water into a glass that's already full. It's just going to spill over again.

Sensational news reports only exacerbate the unwarranted fears of unenlightened bear observers. We need a better-informed media to stop overreacting.

In reality, local bears need be more fearful of us than we need be of them. A bear in downtown Athol, for example, was immobilized by environmental police, and subsequently euthanized because the chemicals in its system might have posed a danger to bear hunters eating it. It's too bad we don't have a temporary enclosure for such bears to get them detoxified for release back into the wild.

Much has been recently made about a bear attacking a sheep in Hardwick. Several T&G readers have written in on the side of the bear. They raise a good question about ultimate objectives and responsibility. Do we want bears or not? If we do, are we willing to take the steps necessary for their inclusion in our society?

Dogs left outside can cause problems with bears, too. They can be prone to bark and attack wandering bears in aggressively defending their yards, and the bears may try to defend themselves.

Meanwhile, bear hunting is going to get only better. Baiting and hounds, used with much success in several other states, have been prohibited in Massachusetts. Rifles, though prohibited for deer hunting here, are surprisingly legal for bear.

Any caliber good for deer hunting is suitable for Massachusetts bears, as the majority taken here will weigh about the same as a deer.

While bear season is an opportunity to harvest good meat — much like lean pork — and a luxurious rug, it's more importantly a means to control an expanding population and keep it respectful of humans.

Hunters definitely contribute to public safety, keeping attitudes toward bears positive. But with their inevitable eastern expansion, we've got a lot of work to do to inform the public that bears are natural treasures that are here to stay — and no reason for alarm.